It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to particulars I no more foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me rather out of sorts. Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickleson, and I took leave of Pickleson, advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion. Towards morning I kept a look out for the strange young man, and–what was more–I saw the strange young man. He was well dressed and well looking. He loitered very nigh my carts, watching them like as if he was taking care of them, and soon after daybreak turned and went away. I sent a hail after him, but he never started or looked round, or took the smallest notice.
We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards Carlisle. Next morning, at daybreak, I looked out again for the strange young man. I did not see him. But next morning I looked out again, and there he was once more. I sent another hail after him, but as before he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways disturbed. This put a thought into my head. Acting on it I watched him in different manners and at different times not necessary to enter into, till I found that this strange young man was deaf and dumb.
The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that establishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some of them well off), and I thought to myself, “If she favours him, where am I? and where is all that I have worked and planned for?” Hoping- -I must confess to the selfishness–that she might NOT favour him, I set myself to find out. At last I was by accident present at a meeting between them in the open air, looking on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of it. It was a moving meeting for all the three parties concerned. I knew every syllable that passed between them as well as they did. I listened with my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb conversation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a-going out to China as clerk in a merchant’s house, which his father had been before him. He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted her to marry him and go along with him. She persisted, no. He asked if she didn’t love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly; but she could never disappoint her beloved, good, noble, generous, and I-don’t-know-what-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat) and she would stay with him, Heaven bless him! though it was to break her heart. Then she cried most bitterly, and that made up my mind.
While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouring this young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, that it was well for him he had got his legacy down. For I often thought, “If it hadn’t been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never have come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the young man.” But, once that I knew she loved him,–once that I had seen her weep for him,–it was a different thing. I made it right in my mind with Pickleson on the spot, and I shook myself together to do what was right by all.
She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes to get me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaning against another of the fir-trees,–of which there was a cluster, -with his face upon his arm. I touched him on the back. Looking up and seeing me, he says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, “Do not be angry.”
“I am not angry, good boy. I am your friend. Come with me.”
I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I went up alone. She was drying her eyes.
“You have been crying, my dear.”